Web 2.0- The Killer of Design

Thursday, June 14, 2007

This may seem a strange statement coming from someone who has designed a few sites that may be deemed as Web2.0 but there’s a big confusion as to what exactly Web2.0 means.

So what does it really mean? Everyone is talking about it but it has different connotations for each person. What originally started out as a label for a set of technologies, later expanded to include a specific graphical look and even a general philosophy on interaction methods. As far as technology goes, web founder Tim Berners-Lee said it best: “this ‘Web 2.0,’ it means using the standards which have been produced by all these people working on Web 1.0.” So nothing new here, except, maybe, that the continuous evolution of browsers may have finally enabled the use of those technologies as it was meant from the beginning. In any case, the tools were finally developed and they suddenly provided the regular user with a lot more power than before; and with all this new found power, be it in the form of blogs, social networking solutions, wikis or content publishing and sharing systems, came a new breed of internet thinking, which some may refer to as the Web2.0 philosophy. It’s all about empowering the user as an active contributor of information in ways that are so straightforward that anyone can do it. Whereas a few years ago, you had to have at least some basic knowledge about HTML to put together and publish a few texts and images, now it’s as simple as a few clicks.

We now have myriads of users actively publishing content on the internet; but when it’s so easy to do it and all the barriers have been removed, what will the user do with this absolute freedom, especially considering his general lack of whatever publishing skills were necessary before? Too much freedom can be dangerous and the user will eventually abuse it. Just take a look at MySpace or other similar sites to see what I’m talking about. The designer’s nightmare is upon us – users are given the power to choose layout, colors, fonts, and all the flashy gimmicks they want.

All this freedom is not a bad thing in itself. What’s bad is that its results are mimicked in an attempt to gain from all this Web2.0 hype: “We want our site to look more like a ‘do-it-yourself’ type so that people will know it’s new and cool and Web2.0”. Trends have always been set by leaders and who are the leaders of this movement? Sites like MySpace, YouTube or FaceBook, who have generated an enormous amount of hype but, in the end, have done so through their innovative concepts and certainly not through their design, which is sub par at best.

This recent empowerment also led to a false sense of knowledge for a lot of people who otherwise don’t have anything in common with the intricacies of high quality design. Just because you’ve been browsing the web since the 14.4K modem, that doesn’t make you a designer; just because you know every programming language out there, from PHP to Ruby, that doesn’t make you a designer; just because you’re running 5 blogs and a very successful YouTube account, that doesn’t make you a designer; just because you know by heart every effect and filter available in Photoshop, that still doesn’t make you a designer.

I’m going to stress this one more time: Web2.0 is not about design, it’s about the quality of the interaction methods and the principles behind those have seen little change since the beginning of the web, whereas design trends come and go all the time. Quality interactive design is still what it’s all about, maybe even more today than before.